


HCl

by actualgarbage



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-14
Updated: 2015-04-14
Packaged: 2018-03-22 19:11:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3740359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actualgarbage/pseuds/actualgarbage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Ark Bookstore, how may I help you?” Bellamy did his best to make his voice sound appropriately enthused since his manager was standing fairly close to the registers, but his joyful tone in no way reflected his current mood. He hated his job. This phone call was bound to be yet another stupid freshman who thought they wouldn’t actually need the textbook for a class and so three weeks into the semester they were trying to get their ass in gear and find the book before class the next day.<br/>“Hi,” a voice started tentatively. He fought the urge to roll his eyes. “I was just wondering if you happened to sell any 12 molar Hydrochloric Acid?”<br/>Great. A prank call. Bellamy LOVED those.<br/>“Ma’am, this is a bookstore- you do know that, right?”<br/>Based on a Tumblr prompt</p>
            </blockquote>





	HCl

**Author's Note:**

> This was sent to me as a prompt for a birthday present and it was effective in making my day. It took me almost a week to write but here it is!

“Ark Bookstore, how may I help you?” Bellamy did his best to make his voice sound appropriately enthused since his manager was standing fairly close to the registers, but his joyful tone in no way reflected his current mood. He hated his job. This phone call was bound to be yet another stupid freshman who thought they wouldn’t actually need the textbook for a class and so three weeks into the semester they were trying to get their ass in gear and find the book before class the next day.

“Hi,” a voice started tentatively. He fought the urge to roll his eyes. “I was just wondering if you happened to sell any 12 molar Hydrochloric Acid?”

Great. A prank call. Bellamy LOVED those.

“Ma’am, this is a bookstore- you do know that, right?”

“Yeah- I mean yes I know, but you sell other supplies, too, right?”

They did sell other supplies but Bellamy was pretty certain that highly corrosive solutions weren’t included in that. As far as creativity goes, Bellamy had to give the caller some points because this was certainly a new request.

“Pretty sure we haven’t got any dangerous chemicals on our shelves, miss.”

“Damn.” The other voice sounded genuinely frustrated and a little surprised. There wasn’t even any giggling. Maybe the caller was a theater major? Bellamy eyed the manager for a second before his curiosity got the best of him.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what do you need Hydrochloric Acid for? And why would you try and look for it at a campus bookstore?” He hoped incredulity was evident in his voice.

“It’s um. It’s for a thing, and I just wasn’t really sure where else to call for it.” the voice let out an exasperated sigh. “Are you sure you don’t have any? Can you check in the back? It’s kind of an emergency.” 

Bellamy let his jaw drop slightly at that. He almost wanted to laugh, but the girl’s desperation was very convincing and he wasn’t sure laughing would be the best course of action for her sake. 

Then again, this girl  _had_  called to try and acquisition a very dangerous chemical. Maybe worrying about her happiness wasn’t the best idea. Bellamy wasn’t fully convinced this was a prank anymore, that’s for sure. So as calmly as he could manage, he started speaking again.

“If you can tell me what you need it for, maybe I can help you out,” 

The girl scoffed into the receiver.

Maybe Bellamy’s voice didn’t translate quite as calmly as he had intended it to, because he’s pretty sure the girl must have thought he was mocking her.

“I don’t have time for that. Can you check in the back or what?” Her tone was demanding and he got the feeling she was used to getting what she wanted. Probably some sorority chick planning a trick on a friend or something. Bellamy couldn’t really think of any other explanations, but he was getting irritated at her tone.

“Listen, princess,” the girl scoffed again but he kept talking “you can’t just call and ask for something like that and expect people not to ask questions. Now do you want to explain, or should I call the police?”

“Calm down, asshole. I’ll just get it somewhere else,” was all he got from her before he heard the other line go dead.

He slammed the receiver back down and grumbled to himself a little. In his frustration, he must have forgotten that his manager was within earshot, and with the way Shumway was glaring at him now, he knew he’d be reprimanded for speaking to a patron like that. In his defense, though, she wasn’t exactly being pleasant. Unfortunately, at Ark University’s campus bookstore, the customer was always right.

If Bellamy didn’t need the job so badly he’d have quit on his first day, but he had to pay rent. He liked his other position much better. The university had hired him to help run tech for presentations, and while it was pretty boring and mostly just clicking next on PowerPoint and making sure microphones were working, the presenters were usually friendly and he’d actually learned some really interesting things during his time there.

He was scheduled to run a chem-lab demonstration tomorrow for Professor Sinclair. While he much preferred the history lectures and guest speakers the University hosted, Sinclair always brought coffee in for Bellamy, and being a college student, free  _anything_  meant he’d enjoy it.

His mind was focused halfway between free coffee and the crazy request of the girl on the phone as Shumway chewed him out. Bellamy was put on inventory for the rest of his shift (maybe the rest of the week if none of his coworkers screwed up before he was scheduled to work again) and so he begrudgingly made his way to the back to count and price things. At least he didn’t have to deal with unhappy customers back here.

About two hours into scanning and labeling, Bellamy found himself next to the chemistry textbooks and the padlocked cabinets with corresponding supplies. So maybe they did sell hydrochloric acid. Bellamy felt kind of like a dick about the way he’d acted to the girl on the phone because she hadn’t actually been a psychopath. He would apologize, but he had no way of finding her (the store didn’t log phone calls) and even if he could, it would be a little weird for him to seek her out. He just hoped that she actually found some of the acid because he was too skeptical to go look for it.

++++

Bellamy was running late. He didn’t even have a good excuse, either. But there he was, sprinting across campus eight minutes after he was supposed to show up in the lecture hall. He almost tripped over a terrified looking freshman and got run over by a car on the way, but he managed to make it into the room, already apologizing to Sinclair as he shoved the door open.

Only Sinclair wasn’t the person he found.

“Sorry, I- uh I think I’m in the room. Do you know where Professor Sinclair’s presentation was moved? I swear it was in here.” Bellamy said hastily as he rummaged in his messenger bag for the events schedule.

“No, you’re in the right room. Late, I might add.”

He stopped moving for the first time since he’d missed his alarm this morning. He looked up to find someone who was  _very much_ not Professor Sinclair. Like- more NOT Professor Sinclair than Bellamy had originally thought. There was a very blonde, very hot, and  _very pissed_ woman glaring at him. 

He was suddenly torn between wanting Sinclair to come back and wanting him to stay away forever.

“Where’s the Professor then?” He snapped. She might have been hot but he still needed Sinclair so he could do his job and, you know, get paid.

“He had a family emergency or something. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter though, because I’m his TA and he put me in charge of running the presentation, and you’re late.”

It was then that he noticed that the girl looked almost as frazzled as he felt- and with good reason, too. Having such a long presentation delegated to you last minute probably wasn’t exactly soothing. 

“Well I’m here now, so tell me what you need.”

She turned away from him abruptly and walked to the desk at the front of the hall. He followed her.

“I have here the outline for Sinclair’s original presentation. I would assume you already have it but judging from the impression you’ve already made, I wouldn’t bet on it.”

Bellamy took a deep breath so he wouldn’t snap at her. Octavia had been telling him to work on his temper.

The girl took his silence as an invitation to continue.

“I’ve made my notes on it and there have been a few changes to the order of things simply because of logistics.”

“Well that’s no surprise. You seem like a very logical person.” Octavia told him to work on his temper- she never mentioned the sarcasm.

The girl (he should probably figure out her name at some point) shot daggers at him before returning her gaze to the desk where she was rifling through papers.

“If you could just update the digital presentation to match the alterations,” her voice had an extra bite to it now, “that would be just dandy.” She whirled on him and shoved the papers into his chest.

 _Damn_  that icy stare probably shouldn’t have been as hot as it was, but Bellamy had always liked a challenge.

“Demanding.” Ugh and he was smirking again. He hated that he did that, but he hadn’t had enough coffee yet to care too much. “Anything else, your majesty?”

As expected, she rolled her eyes and whirled back around to continue her preparations.

“Don’t be an asshole. I don’t have time for that.” Something about the way she said those words struck him as familiar, but he couldn’t quite pinpoint it.

Bellamy shook off the Deja-Vu and went to the back of the hall to get the tech booth set up. He’d mostly finished rearranging the slides according to the neatly dictated scrawl in the margins when she spoke again.

“Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t think to ask your name when you came in” She had to project her voice a bit for him to hear her, but she was looking at him expectantly.

“Bellamy Blake.”

She gave a sharp nod, but didn’t offer her own name, which, rude.

“You gonna tell me your name, princess, or am I just gonna have to keep calling you your highness,” he deadpanned.

“Clarke Griffin, but I don’t mind your highness,” She smiled at him, and damn, it was worse than the scowling. So, of course, he frowned in response.

The girl- Clarke- was at the front of the presentation space now arranging chemicals and beakers for the presentation. It was set to start in about half an hour which meant they had about ten minutes before people started trickling into the auditorium. The presentation was for high schoolers- potential recruits for the science department.  Bellamy figured that with a presenter as attractive as Clarke, at least the boys in the room would pay attention. He just hoped that Clarke was a little less standoffish when she spoke to the group than she had been with him.

As predicted, the high prospective students and their parents began filtering into the room and taking their seats in the next few minutes and before he knew it, Clarke was putting on a lab coat and safety glasses and taking her place to speak.

She went through the basics of Ark’s science department’s main focuses and talked a little about the career options that came with the majors and Clarke revealed that she was going into medical research. The way she spoke was commanding of the room’s attention- it came off with a graceful authority that was easy to respect. Belllamy was beyond impressed that she’d managed to put together such a good talk on such short notice.

Before long Clarke was moving onto the experiments and narrating them as she went. They were things like elephant toothpaste and dipping irrelevant objects (in this case, daisies) into liquid nitrogen so she could shatter them- they made for a cool reaction but had limited practicality in the actual scientific world. The audience didn’t really seem to care as they sat engrossed in her speech.

Bellamy was hooked, too.  He wasn’t paying quite as much attention- just listening for cues to change the slides, really, but she was hard to keep his eyes off of. He admired her composure. She looked almost nothing like the flustered girl he’d found upon entering the classroom and instead was interacting pleasantly with the audience. She’d cracked jokes and been intriguing and it was very clear she was a natural born leader.

“…going to show you what happens when you expose certain metals to hydrochloric acid, but I ended up not having enough to actually do anything. And just in case any of you were wondering, the campus bookstore does not in fact sell HCl and they don’t take it too kindly when you call them to check” she was smiling and the audience was laughing for her but Bellamy wasn’t. He was too busy staring in shock to even keep paying attention, really.

Clarke was the girl on the phone.

That’s why he thought she’d sounded familiar.

Should he apologize? He had kind of been a large contributor to her stress, after all. Not only had he been late but he’d partially ruined her presentation. Maybe he just wouldn’t tell her at all? He couldn’t decide.

Then he noticed that Clarke was staring at him with one eyebrow quirked and a look that was pretty similar to Octavia’s “what the hell are you doing” glare. What was that about?

Oh, the slides. Right. He’d been so caught up in thought about how he’d ruined Clarke’s presentation that he’d almost ruined it again.

Clarke, however, recovered seamlessly and filled the time that Bellamy spent on the wrong slide without a hitch. The girl was good under pressure.

Yeah, Bellamy really owed her an apology. Or two or three.

The rest of the presentation went smoothly, and soon Bellamy was out of slides and Clarke was instructing the high schoolers on where they could meet the campus tour guides and cleaning up the lab station.

Bellamy closed out of the program and shut off all of the gadgets in the tech booth and the computer before he bent over to grab his bag to pack up the things he’d brought with him. When he looked up, Clarke had taken off the coat and glasses and she was making her way to him. Bellamy felt himself tense as he stood up and tossed the strap of the messenger bag over his shoulder. She was probably just coming back there to chew him out for slipping up during the presentation, right? He was ready to get on his knees and beg for mercy because for some reason the idea that this stranger was mad at him was driving him crazy. He looked her right in the eyes, an apology already on his lips, but stopped short because of the look on her face.

“I’m so sorry,” she blurted out, her eyes imploring and her hands out like she was trying to calm down a frightened animal.

Needless to say, Bellamy was shocked.

“You’re _sorry?_ ” Maybe he’d put emphasis on the wrong word because her expression turned even more pleading.

“Really, I am. I shouldn’t have been so rude this morning gi just-“

“ _You’re_ sorry,” he corrected. “You have no reason to be sorry it’s-“

“Yes I do!” She was stubborn. Huh. That was familiar. “I was so rude to you.”

“And I was late, so I deserved it,” he was smiling a little bit because as weird as this was he couldn’t help but be a little excite that she felt so compelled to make amends with him for some reason.

“Okay that’s true,” she was half-smiling now, too. “I guess we’re even, then.”

They weren’t though. Bellamy knew he should say something.

“Actually I don’t think we are.”

She was obviously confused.

“Ark Bookstore sells Hydrochloric Acid.”

“What? What are you talking about?” She narrowed her eyes at him and leaned against the back of a row of seats.

 _Wow_ Bellamy. Way to clear things up.

“So you know that asshole who wouldn’t check the back for HCl?” realization was creeping onto her features now and _shit_ was Bellamy messing this up. He raised his hand to rub his neck and looked to the floor before he continued. “Um, well he checked the back a few hours later and found out that the store helps supply the science department and he feels like a total jerk.”

Clarke didn’t say anything.

“Also he’s really horribly sorry,” Bellamy looked up at her so he could add some sincerity to his apology because if she hadn’t responded it was probably because she was too furious to even get words out and he couldn’t deal with- wait, she was smiling? That didn’t make any sense.

Clarke was smiling at him. He’d ruined her presentation and she was grinning about it?

“Well I guess you’ll just have to make it up to me somehow,”

“You- I, what?” why was it so hard to vocalize a coherent thought, suddenly? This would be easier if she wasn’t so pretty and he wasn’t so confused.

“Yeah, I spent most of my morning panicking because I couldn’t get my hands on the stuff, and I didn’t have any time to grab breakfast, so if you want to make it up to me, I know a really great place just a couple blocks west of here with some kickass French toast.”

That was certainly not what Bellamy had expected.

She was doing the eyebrow thing at him again and he realized he’d been staring at her instead of responding like a regular human being.

“I would love nothing more than to make it up to you,” he replied honestly and grinned like an idiot.

“Well come on, then. I’m starved.” She turned on her heel and walked back down the auditorium’s steps and he followed dutifully.

And thank God Bellamy had been a jerk on the phone because he decided not even a year later that he wanted to spend the rest of his life making it up to her. She let him.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments?? Thoughts???? Hopes and dreams????  
> Talk to me. I know this wasn't my best work but I hope you enjoyed it anyways. Thanks for reading and I promise I'll TRY and post more stuff in the next few weeks and stuff but I just started rehearsals for a musical so life is about to get more hectic and you guys know how regularly I post anyways.... so sorry in advance.  
> XOXO


End file.
